The Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book 1, "Final Report of the Select Comm-ittee to Study Governmental operations with respect to Intelligence Activities." United States Senate, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 94-755, April 26,
1976, page 49 states: "This directive empowered the secretary of state to coord-inate overseas information activities designed to counter communism. A top
secret annex to NSC-4, NSC-4A, instructed the director of Central Intelligence
to undertake covert psycological activities in persuit of the aims set forth in
NSC-4. The initial authority given the CIA for covert operations under NSC-4A
did not establish formal procedures for either coordinating or approving these
operations. It simply directed the DCI to "undertake covert actions and ensure,
through liasion with State and Defense, that the resulting operations were cons-istent with American policy."

Later NSC-10/1 and NSC-10/2 were to supersede NSC-4 and NSC-4A and expand the
covert abilities even further. The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was
chartered to carry out an expanded program of covert activities. NSC-10/1 and
NSC-10/2 validated illegal and extra-legal practices and procedures as being
agreeable to the national security leadership. The reaction was swift. In the
eyes of the intelligence community "no holds were barred". Under NSC-10/1 an
Executive Coordination Group, was established to review, but not approve, covertproject proposals. The ECG was secretlt tasked to coordinate the alien projects.NSC-10/1 and NSC-10/2 were interpreted to mean that no one at the top wanted to
know anything about it until it was over and successful.